I think this should be pretty clear to most of you now: There is nothing to be done to stop or reverse this trend except blocking out the sun. There never was and anyone that says otherwise just doesn't grasp the magnitude of the thermodynamic process in motion. Keep in mind that while surface ocean temperatures are recorded, AFAIK there is very little to measure the temperature in depth, and what little information is publicly available paints a very bad picture.

This means that oceans have been acting as a hidden heat sink and instead of simply warming up at the surface, the surface temperatures have remained somewhat steady while the majority of the new stored heat has been happening in the depths, as the warm waters of the ocean reach lower into previously cold layers.

What should be obvious to most of you is that the surface energy system of Earth operates under Energy In and Energy Out. The sun may go through cycles that change its energy output and we may be in a "cold" phase, but the continuous infusion of CO2 and more importantly CH4 in the last 200 years has reduced the Energy Out factor. The green house effect of the atmosphere is real and everyone understands it, but what is not so well understood is that with the increased heat retention it mandates, the air is heating up the ocean. As more heat is stored, warmer water goes ever deeper. Now, the fatal blow comes from the fat that there is a lot of permafrost in Siberia, but also underwater in shallow Siberian waters that were dry land before the Melt Water pulses of the end of the last Ice Age. This warm water in the ocean can melt that permafrost very fast, and in conjunction with all the CH4 coming from the land based melting permafrost...

Well, essentially, humans kick-started the process with CO2, but I think the momentum of this thing could not be stopped even decades ago. You can't stop or even reverse what is going on. We haven't even seen the effects that all this released CH4 is having/going to have, and subsequently the increasing melting rates of Ice in Greenland and Antarctica cannot be so quickly reversed, stopped or even slowed!

I am firmly of the opinion that only radical geo-engineering efforts can save us from a mass extinction event of unprecedented speed and magnitude. The weather anomalies, mass migrations and beginnings of coastal flooding that we are now experiencing are only the start. The oceans will rise 50 feet in the next few decades, plan accordingly.

But all is not lost. As long as we don't unleash weapons of mass destruction in the coming tribulations (good luck I guess, people that have nothing left to lose can be unpredictable) we should be OK in a more tropical planet with a population of a few billion. I hope to still be alive to see it happen, but my guess is that things will start to stabilize in about 30-40 years.

kiwichick wrote:@ 35 kas........how do you get a 50 foot rise in sea levels in the next few decades?

Run away release of CH4 from permafrost and underwater reservoirs (clathrates) supercharges the accelerating feedback loop effect of greenhouse gas effect warming, which causes accelerated increase in ocean temperatures, polar temperatures and rapid melting of glacial ice in West Antarctica and Greenland.

The optimistic 100 year and 2 deg C estimates are blown out of the water and it happens within 10-20 years. The massive release of methane in Siberia and the Arctic Ocean has already started...

In that environment, a 3 foot rise within 10 years is possible, with increasing levels after that. The consequences would be apocalyptic, right back to Permian tier weather (tropical jungle in high latitudes).

The American navy, and presumably others, constantly measure water temperatures up and down the colum from surface to sea floor. Temperature effects density, and density effects how sonar signals propogate over distances. There is also a distinct layer change between warm surface layer and colder layer called the thermohaline barrier that reflects sonar pretty strongly.

II Chronicles 7:14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Extreme warmth and heat-stressed plankton in the tropics during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

Abstract

Global ocean temperatures rapidly warmed by ~5°C during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM; ~56 million years ago). Extratropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) met or exceeded modern subtropical values. With these warm extratropical temperatures, climate models predict tropical SSTs >35°C—near upper physiological temperature limits for many organisms. However, few data are available to test these projected extreme tropical temperatures or their potential lethality. We identify the PETM in a shallow marine sedimentary section deposited in Nigeria. On the basis of planktonic foraminiferal Mg/Ca and oxygen isotope ratios and the molecular proxy Embedded Image, latest Paleocene equatorial SSTs were ~33°C, and Embedded Image indicates that SSTs rose to >36°C during the PETM. This confirms model predictions on the magnitude of polar amplification and refutes the tropical thermostat theory. We attribute a massive drop in dinoflagellate abundance and diversity at peak warmth to thermal stress, showing that the base of tropical food webs is vulnerable to rapid warming.

...we surmise that conditions became too hot for most dinoflagellate taxa during the body of the PETM, when SSTs rose to values >36°C. Such temperatures are considered uninhabitable for most marine eukaryotic organisms today (48) even for hardy dinoflagellates, which are among the most temperature-resilient eukaryote plankton groups (49). Apart from often displaying narrow temperature tolerance ranges (9), many modern thermophilic organisms show a sharp decline in productivity and, consequently, survival above optimum temperatures (50). A similar absence of mixed-layer planktonic foraminifera was observed in Tanzania (12), suggesting that heat stress may have been more widespread in tropical marginal marine settings during the PETM.

Longstanding theories dating to the 1980s suggest that as the rest of the earth warms, the tropical temperatures would be strictly limited, or regulated by an internal 'thermostat.' These theories are controversial, but the debate is of great importance because the tropics and subtropics comprise half of the earth's surface area, greater than half of the earth's biodiversity, as well as over half the earth's human population. But new geological and climate-based research indicates the tropics may have reached a temperature 56 million years ago that was, indeed, too hot for living organisms to survive in parts of the tropics.

"The records produced in this study indicate that when the tropics warmed that last little bit, a threshold was passed and parts of the tropical biosphere seems to have died," Huber said. "This is the first time that we've found really good information, in a very detailed way, where we saw major changes in the tropics directly associated with warming past a key threshold in the past 60 million years."

If you say there's no tropical thermostat, then half of the world's biodiversity -- over half of the world's population, the tropical rainforests, the reefs, India, Brazil -- these populous and very important countries have nothing to prevent them from warming up substantially above conditions that humans can survive.

Did they really believe in some homeostatic salvation for the tropics, or was it just too inconvenient to speak the truth?

"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry

The level of injustice and wrong you endure is directly determined by how much you quietly submit to. Even to the point of extinction.

Looks like the biologists bought into some quackery about ocean-atmosphere dynamics. Just as there is no thermal valve in the atmosphere (e.g. infrared iris of R. Lindzen), there is no valve in the ocean. Basically all sea life is concentrated in the uppermost euphotic zone and the seabed. The surface ocean can keep warming beyond 36 C since the mixed layer gets shallower and there is a reduction of heat exchange with the colder subsurface waters:

A process of enhanced exchange of deep colder waters to the surface would act like a homeostatic mechanism (up to some limit when the oceans warmed to the seabed). But arrogant humans don't have any such luck.

The Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has most likely been destabilized and ice retreat is unstoppable for the current conditions.No further acceleration in climate change is necessary to trigger the collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, with loss of a significant fraction on a decadal to century time scale.Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100.A large fraction of West Antarctic basin ice could be gone within two centuries, causing a 3–5 metre sea level rise.

dohboi wrote:I posted this in the Antarctic thread, but since the result is massive sea level rise, possibly in our lifetimes (excluding octogenarians and older, perhaps), it should probably go here as well:

The Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has most likely been destabilized and ice retreat is unstoppable for the current conditions.No further acceleration in climate change is necessary to trigger the collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, with loss of a significant fraction on a decadal to century time scale.Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100.A large fraction of West Antarctic basin ice could be gone within two centuries, causing a 3–5 metre sea level rise.

It is looking more and more like 2 meters by 2100 is wildly optimistic. We are going to see well over 2 meters by 2100. I think 3+ meters is likely. Hansen's paper on the subject points to the nonlinearity of the melt process. This is always important to keep in mind. Humans make implicit linearizing assumptions when trying to understand problems. This is just our biology and is the simplest initial approximation approach to modeling. The human brain is a model creation engine even if we do not consciously perceive it.

dissident wrote:It is looking more and more like 2 meters by 2100 is wildly optimistic. We are going to see well over 2 meters by 2100. I think 3+ meters is likely. Hansen's paper on the subject points to the nonlinearity of the melt process. This is always important to keep in mind. Humans make implicit linearizing assumptions when trying to understand problems. This is just our biology and is the simplest initial approximation approach to modeling. The human brain is a model creation engine even if we do not consciously perceive it.

Warmer ocean waters and increased acidification act together to dissolve the shells of some sea creatures.

The warmer waters make the creatures change their body chemistry, adding more magnesium, which then predisposes them to being dissolved by acidic waters. “They were trying to grow but were dissolving at the same time” – a pretty sad image.